A jazz drummer feels a soulful, surging rhythmand on his snare behind the band he tattoos it.

When she receives a blessing, the proofreaderalways suspects a mistake and must peruse it.

Attacked by a bear, an atheist blurts a prayer,and then with Herculean effort he subdues it.

Even when it rains one calamity after another,a faithful elder raises an umbrella to excuse it.

She knows a communion wafer should dissolvein the mouth, but an impish goddess chews it.

Impish God eschews it, the divine truth we seek,theologians sigh. It’s in how each construes it.

Do you commune with it, this mystery of Spirit?A Crane tilts back her head to whoop, Who’s It?

BARBARA LYDECKER CRANE has published two chapbooks, Zero Gravitas, and ALPHABETRICKS. Recent poems have appeared in Angle, Light, The Lyric, Rotary Dial and Think Journal. She gives two reasons for her enjoyment of ghazal writing: she likes knowing where a line is headed, and she appreciates that both her first and last names have more than one meaning. “Lydecker" is not so lucky!